On Jan 30, 2008 12:28 AM, John Summerfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I can understand that some (many) value certification, but does everyone > require it? I believe that when running commercial middleware on a distribution that is not certified, it means that the vendor will not provide support for it. Possibly not even for issues that clearly are unrelated to the distribution. If you pay for that support, it would be good to run in a supported environment. > What happens when one updates high-impact software such as the kernel or > glibc? or worse, requires a non-standard kernel (it might not happen on > Zeds, but it does on intellishware)? Yes. So you will have to wait for your middleware vendor to bless that kernel level or take your risk otherwise. To avoid the endless combinations, the Enterprise Linux distributions (not just s390) use Service Pack or Upgrade Levels rather than a per-package upgrades. Large installations may also have their own internal change management and ITIL-based deployment process. In such an environment, ad-hoc upgrade of glibc for some servers on monday morning is frowned upon. People with a background in "consumer type" Linux distributions sometimes show different objectives regarding installation of maintenance. I found it really helps to go to a minimal installation, removing all software that you don't really need on the server. That tends to reduce the need for urgent maintenance a lot. Given a fair amount of different applications, you may have a hard time finding a common supported platform. Fortunately with virtualization you can at least run different levels next to each other, even though it's a pain. That's one of the reasons why we don't use a proprietary agent for data collection. Rob ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
